Pipes you see, Pipes you don't
by syntaxandgramma
Summary: Set after 'Nag Hammadi'. Nostalgia, wistful thinking and Boy George. Will things ever work out? Literati.
1. One

Disclaimer: This is all a lie.  
  
Literati eventually. (that means Rory and Jess, right? I'm new to all this crazy Gilmore Girl fiction lingo.) There may be chapter titles later. Perhaps not.  
  
Chapter One  
  
The sidewalk was nice. Bright, whitewashed, little pebbles and seashells grounded in to give it a more rustic effect. Lane and Rory strolled casually underneath the trees of Stars Hollow. The sort of trees that have a little hole of dirt dug around them, placed smack dab in the middle of the pavement, leaves intertwining with the overhanging of stores' signs.  
  
"Gah." Rory made a noise of disgust as the pair wheeled around to look at a rather ghastly window display, containing a mannequin in hot pants holding a fish splashed pink. Cheap tinsel and bright pink curtains clung to the sides and the back of the display case.  
  
"Is the Culture Club coming to town?" Lane wondered.  
  
"I highly doubt Boy George would be caught dead wearing that. What's with the fish?" Rory cocked her slightly in confusion.  
  
"It's meant to represent the struggle between man and nature." Kirk said, suddenly appearing behind them. "Do you like it?" He asked, without blinking.  
  
"It's lovely." Rory asserted, giving Lane a sideways glance that prompted her aide.  
  
"I'd even ask you to do my own window display..." Lane said.  
  
"I'd like that."  
  
Lane panicked. "Er, well, uh...I have...this whale; it's really not the best time..." She grasped at straws; Rory grabbed her elbow and dragged her stuttering best friend away.  
  
"Bye Kirk!" She yelled, waving farewell. Kirk nodded astutely and saluted the retreating girls.  
  
"That was a close one."  
  
Rory nodded, taking a sip from her stryofoam to-go coffee cup. Feeling the little plastic divet run against her mouth, making note of the luke-warm spring breeze that twisted through the door as the little bell on top announced her arrival in the dusty bookstore. She nodded at the man behind the counter, Lane following her in and to the back of the shelves.  
  
"Don't you own all of these books?" Lane asked, glancing at the mixture of paperback and hardcover titles as Rory knelt down in search for some literary title.  
  
"Don't you own all these albums?" Rory countered, pulling a worn copy of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid test out of the stuffed shelves.  
  
"Not on vinyl." Lane complied.  
  
"Duely noted." Rory ran her fingers lightly over the raised area of text on the book's cover. "Jess read this..." She commented lightly, quietly, in a nostalgic manner. Feeling the scratchy carpet against her jean-covered knees.  
  
Lane's expression softened slightly, trying to think of something to express her solidarity with Rory's emotions when she had no idea what Rory's emotions were, exactly. Somehow, she didn't think yelling 'black panthers!' would be appropriate.  
  
"You know he came back, right?" The other girl looked up momentarily from the book.  
  
"I know." Lane nodded, sliding her back down against the wall and getting herself in a comfortable position on the floor, preparing herself to the empathetic listener role.  
  
"We talked." Lane waited for her to continue. "He, uh, he told me he loves me." Rory rushed out quickly, fiddling with her finger.  
  
Lane twisted her lips a little, processing the new information. "And what did you say?"  
  
"Nothing."  
  
"And what did you want to say?"  
  
"I..." Rory bit her lip slowly, twisting her finger further and further, Lane worried for a moment it would break. "I don't know! It's all so confusing. Why did he have to come back? Why did he have to leave? Why did he have to say that and then go and be Jess and..." She suddenly got quieter, "I know I loved him. But I don't know if I still do."  
  
Lane nodded, having a wistful Dave thought before quickly pushing it away and focusing on her friends' soap opera life. "You think talking to him would help?"  
  
"Maybe, not right now, but at some point. Two month time frame." She said, before cynically muttering "Not like I could contact him anyway..."  
  
The two sat in uncomfortable silence for a while, Rory's fingers lightly zig-zagging across the book's cover.  
  
"You know," Lane said, attempting to the break the tension and help her friend get out of the 'mopey-reflective' period. "If Thom Yorke and Bjork had a baby, it would be called Kid B Yorke."  
  
"Learn something new everyday." Rory pushed herself up from the floor, grabbing the book and her purse, a small chuckle escaping her lips.  
  
Lane smiled, pleased with herself. 


	2. Two

I realize it's not spring. I felt like it anyway.  
  
Chapter 2  
  
Jess flipped through the radio stations, jabbing the poor little black buttons to death, finding all his pre-sets useless. He racked through the piles of CDs and tapes he had dumped on the passenger seat, taking slight nervous glances to the clear road ahead of him. It was late, he needed driving music and coffee or sleeping music and a place to pull over. Nearing a park, he decided on the latter.  
  
The gravel crunched beneath the car wheels, the headlights illuminating silhouettes of tress and tourist information centers that probably smelt like grains and bird shit. He propped open the car door, jamming Sigur Ros' () into the car's cd player and letting the music flow out into the sweet air of the spring sky. It was unusually warm out, considering it was March. Global warming strikes again, Jess thought sarcastically.  
  
He flipped through a worn copy of 'Less than Zero' without really reading the words, his thoughts were on her. Always. It really wasn't a safe way to drive, considering he rarely paid attention to where he was going or who else occupied the road. He thought about the whole situation. His situation and concluded, as he had many times over, that it was completely his fault.  
  
He had left, he had come back. He had courted her, and then he had failed, and then he had left. And now here he stood; a product of consequence. He wondered briefly if it was his heart or his head that hurt, and declared that it was both and that he was a sad, sappy fuck.  
  
He thought about solutions, but they all seemed cheesy and beyond oven the most horrible paper-back romance novels. Or they didn't seem enough. Rory was the sort of girl who couldn't be wooed by flowers and chocolate and really good sex. Books and mixed tapes and witty conversations, probably. But he was beyond that point. He needed something really great, something completely irrational and over the top.  
  
But he had nothing put a phone number and a quarter. A quarter that couldn't even make the call because she was long-distance by now. Maybe a collect call, but how romantic would that be? He highly doubted she would accept the charge.  
  
He angrily jabbed out again at the radio's buttons, finding Sigur Ros' ambient melancholy doing little to improve his mood. He mentally debated between Elliott Smith and Rilo Kiley, deciding quickly on Jenny Lewis' foklternative, love sick country and pop ballads.  
  
He rested his head back on the sticky vinyl seats, the moonlight slanting and illuminating the features of his face. He felt a sharp something- something jab unkindly into the back of his thigh. Jess twisted around in the seat, grappling beneath him and coming up with a cheap plastic blue pen. A small smile crossed his face as an idea struck him. Maybe he had a little more than a collect call, maybe he had a pen and a piece of paper and some postage stamps. 


	3. Three

Alright, I've done some editing in the last two chapters, mostly on typos. I'm thinking I may take a foray into a subplot somehow involving Lane and Dave, because those kids were just my absolute favourite. I thank everyone who reviewed, especially YOU! (see how I pulled that off? Suave.) I realize that it's a concept that's been done before, the original story was supposed to be about Lane meeting Jeff Magnum – but this sort of sprang up.  
  
Once again, two chapters in Rory to Jess format. I'm not planning on sticking with it through the whole story, it just keeps happening that way.  
  
Chapter 3  
  
Rory Gilmore stared at the crisp white envelope that sat at the opposite end of her dorm, as far away from her as possible. It had been a plain, unsuspecting object in the beginning. Friendly and familiar; most likely from her dad or Lane. The object had turned foreign and strange in her hands, as she read the familiar scrawl of her address.  
  
She glanced at it with the air of someone looking at a ticking time bomb in an enclosed area, moving across the room with stealth as though it would go off if it at the sign of any sudden movements. Easing herself into her desk chair, where upon the lethal letter sat.  
  
Approach with caution. Contains possibly fatal materials and small parts. Not suitable for children under three years of age.  
  
Okay, so she was being a little dramatic. I mean, Rory thought to herself, it's not going to kill me. It probably just wants money, or to have lunch. It's a civil letter, a nice letter. A completely harmless little bunny rabbit of a letter. Rory racked her brain for the most innocent thing she could think of. This letter is a puppy...the stay puft marshmallow man...a...um...  
  
"This letter is a newt." Rory proclaimed, completely satisfied with herself. Newts had never harmed anything, where as the stay puft marshmallow man had harmed the ghost busters. "I'm sorry I called you fatal." She apologized to the unblinking, white, rectangle on her desk. Rory bit her lip and took a wayward glance at the envelope, distrust playing on her face, before quickly snapping open her textbook, smacking it right over top the letter with a thunk.  
  
***  
  
"You know, you look all innocent and sweet but I see through the façade." Rory stated matter of factly to the Black Plague buried underneath her books and notes, before returning to the text that had previously held her interested, albeit, not very well.  
  
Rory's eyes skimmed through the paragraph once more, for what seemed like the thousandth time that night. She had gone through the chapter four times already, and had only accomplished the memorization of the opening line.  
  
"The social movements in our society are a particular type of organization. They often begin..."  
  
Rory practically tackled the phone, anxious and eager to have a distraction from the dull text and stupid, stupid, letter.  
  
"Hello?" Rory bellowed into the mouthpiece.  
  
"Ouch, child! My ears." Her mother's voice cringed over the telephone line.  
  
"Sorry, just excited for some form of civilization." She kept her voice at an indoor-tone.  
  
"Ah, what are you studying?"  
  
"Anthropology."  
  
"Huh. Think they would've made it a little more social, considering."  
  
"Oh god," Rory groaned – slouching down in her chair. "Don't even mention that word."  
  
"But it'll be on the test!" Lorelai faked gasped.  
  
"The social movements in our society are a particular type of organization." Rory recited for her mother.  
  
"Ah, you've got it bad my dear."  
  
"And what would 'it' be?" Rory questioned, somewhat warily.  
  
"A variety of things if I'm not mistaken. Boredenza, unifluenenza, Lorelia- seperation anxietyenza, "Her mother rattled off a list of made up disease, "Most things ending in enza, atis and ia, basically. The makings of a Seuss classic."  
  
"But I like school!" Rory insisted.  
  
"And everyday I look up into the heavens and shout 'Why god? Why? Why did you bless me with this perfect kid? And God comes down from the heavens and says - "  
  
"Alright, this is getting a little too Kids in the Hall for me." Rory cut her mom off.  
  
"Sacrilegious, too." Lorelai agreed.  
  
"Right up there with that movie about Jesus being a vampire slayer."  
  
"Anyways, so what are we going to do?"  
  
"'Bout what?"  
  
"Your condition!!!" Lorelai proclaimed, in obvious distress.  
  
"I don't know, Mom, I have a lot to do." Rory carefully shifted her many binders and textbooks around on her desk, seeing the multitude of books push ever closer to the edge.  
  
"Saturday." Her mother decided. "Saturday we are going to drop, cancel and reschedule any plans we have, drop absolutely everything, throw away our cell phones, pagers and other forms of communication technology and have 24 hours completely to ourselves. From 11 Am on Saturday to 11 Am on Sunday. Deal?"  
  
"Deal."  
  
"Okay, we must part. Until we meet again?"  
  
"Au revoir, darling." Rory said in a full dramatic lilt, feeling the certain pang of home sickness in the pit of her stomach as the phone clicked.  
  
Rory fixed her gaze on the spot where the textbook met the desk, pursing her lips. In one sudden movement, she grabbed the envelope from under the book, furiously crumpled it up into a ball and tossed it at the waste paper basket. The ball hit the rim and landed unceremoniously on the floor. She crossed her arms in a huff and stared adamantly at the wall in front of her.  
  
"Jerk." She muttered out of the side of her mouth to the ball on the floor.  
  
A moment passed before Rory hastily picked the letter up and desperately tried to smooth out the crinkles.  
  
"I want you to know this doesn't mean I like you." 


	4. Four

Chapter Four  
  
Jess wasn't quite sure when he had decided that he was in love with Lorelai Leigh Gilmore. He was certain of the fact the actual falling in love had been a process, a series of moments securely locked away in memory. He had probably been under the realization of it before he had left for California, but the thought had been one of those subconscious, underlying ones. Slippery fuckers. Pushed away and buried under persona and image in his brain...Freud was suddenly starting to make a lot of sense. The idea of loving anyone, of being in love with them and growing attached and possibly dependent and of missing them and needing them scared Jess to death. It scared him right now, in his car, whilst he pined for aforementioned Rory Gilmore.  
  
He knew, and had actually, (when fully awake AND in broad daylight admitted to himself) that he had been , and possibly still was, in love only a few weeks before is impromptu return to Stars Hollow.  
  
But it hadn't yet become a part of him. It was only a fleeting thought, one that he reserved for keeping him awake late at night. He had only recently allowed himself the privilege of performing the proper procedures of unrequited or lost love, whatever it was he had. Ever since he had told her, actually. Since had had said it out loud to another person, in fact, to her. Making it something concrete, a documented event with a witness that would most likely uphold in a court of law as an alibi for that moment, not that Rory would ever testify on his behalf.  
  
It was then the full realization of all his emotions had hit him. It was then he was confused, disoriented and completely awestruck by this horrible affliction called love. It was then he left for the third time, needing of a moment to collect his thoughts. It was now he wanted to fix things.  
  
Jess switched his right turn light on and took an exit way to some little, backwater town. Determined to pull into the first post office and mail this letter before instincts and genetics got the best of him. 


End file.
